By Jeffrey Nall / Truthout
Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout
As fast-food workers demand a fair share of the profits they create, the industry, its supporters and assorted critics of the movement have responded by lobbing red herrings, from the contention that workers should find new work if they don’t like their current working conditions to the threat that “robots will replace you.”
Others charge that workers don’t deserve a living wage because their job doesn’t require a college education. A Facebook meme posted by Sarah Palin in response to last fall’s Fight for 15 protests pictures US soldiers in combat, accompanied by the text: “We get paid less than minimum wage and you’re demanding 15 bucks an hour to slap a burger on a bun.”
These common appeals are part of a tapestry of “plutocratic fallacies” used to justify exploitive wages and foster irrational division among low-wage workers.
Exploitation occurs when “the energies of the have-nots are continuously expended to maintain and augment the power, status, and wealth of the haves.”
Justice: The Heart of the Matter
“Exploitation, Not Lovin’ It.”
These are the words of a popular sign at protests that satirizes McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” slogan. In a society where the vocabulary of ethics, justice and the public good are marginalized and maligned, terms like “exploitation” should be defined: Exploitation is the imbalanced and unfair transfer of the value of one group’s labor to another group.
Philosopher Iris Marion Young writes that exploitation occurs when “the energies of the have-nots are continuously expended to maintain and augment the power, status, and wealth of the haves.”(1)
Exploitation is wrong because it is a form of injustice. Young’s vision of the just society is one that ensures members of society are able to 1) develop themselves – flourish, and 2) play a meaningful role in determining the rules and order of society – political autonomy.(2)
Oppression is the opposite of experiencing justice. To say a person is experiencing oppression is to say “their ability to develop and exercise their capacities and express their needs, thoughts, and feelings” is being unjustifiably inhibited.(3)
Between 1978 and 2013, compensation adjusted for inflation has increased by 937 percent for CEOs and 10.2 percent for the typical worker.
Exploitation is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the stark contrast between CEO pay and average employee pay. Average CEO pay is 185 times that of the average American worker’s pay. The gap is even larger among the CEOs at top American companies. A 2011 study done by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm, found that median pay for CEOs at 200 large US companies averaged $10.8 million in 2010.
The Economic Policy Institute’s June 2014 report found that the average US CEO earned $15.2 million in 2013, an amount 296 times greater than that of the typical American worker. To put this into perspective, EPI notes that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965. Between 1978 and 2013, compensation adjusted for inflation has increased by 937 percent for CEOs and 10.2 percent for the typical worker.
Fast-food workers’ efforts have put their industry’s CEO-to-worker pay disparity front and center. In 2013, McDonald’s president and CEO Don Thompson’s total pay package fell from $13.8 million to a mere $9.5 million. This reduced pay is double what he earned in 2011.
This is a sum that would require a $9.50 an hour employee – the average pay for a McDonald’s shift manager -to work more than 1 million hours. McDonald’s CEO’s pay is 475 times the $20,000 that McDonald’s shift managers could theoretically make if working 40 hours, 52 weeks a year. Thompson’s pay is 570 times greater than a full-time McDonald’s “crew member” working for $8 an hour.
In Thompson’s ballpark, Wendy’s CEO received $7.6 million in total compensation in 2013. As startling as those figures are, the CEO-crew member pay gap is even greater at Yum! Brands. In 2013, the company’s CEO received $11.3 million in pay and benefits and also profited from gains in his company stocks valued at $44.3 million.
Denied dependence is logically implied in assertions that workers are replaceable, unimportant, “low skilled” as in of little value, and/or just lucky to have a job.
Industry representative Justin Winslow, vice president of governmental affairs at the Michigan Restaurant Association, has responded to the fast-food workers’ fight for $15 an hour by contending, “Fifteen dollars an hour is not a reasonable approach.” Yet such industry representatives fail to call into question record-breaking fast-food CEO income.
This despite the fact that fast-food CEO earnings are 1,000 times that of the average fast-food worker’s – that is, when the head of Starbucks’ pay and the reality that most workers do not get to work 40 hours a week are factored in.(4)
Industry defenders justify the exploitation implied in the immense profits generated by poorly rewarded laborers through what philosopher Val Plumwood calls “backgrounding” or “denied dependence”: regarding the essential work done by members of a particular group as unimportant and inessential. Denied dependence is logically implied in assertions that workers are replaceable, unimportant, “low skilled” as in of little value, and/or just lucky to have a job.
This tactic serves to protect the myth of the “self-made man,” which is essential to justifying and preserving such severe examples of economic inequality and workplace exploitation. Such thinking obscures the reality that shareholders and upper management are presently reliant upon fast-food laborers for their immense profits.
Bootstrap Myth Redux: Lazy Fast-Food Complainers
Conventional wisdom dismisses the conditions of fast-food and other low-pay jobs on grounds that the individuals are responsible for their fate and can pull-themselves up by their own bootstraps. Sarah Palin makes this point in an August 7, 2014, criticism of those who support fast-food workers’ living wage campaign. At the end of the, at times, incoherent recorded speech, Palin says, “Minimum wage jobs: they’re not lifetime gigs; they’re stepping stones.”
Having shifted the debate to focus on the workers’ character and conduct, such narratives avoid crucial questions: “What entitles a wealthy, successful corporation to pay its workers so little while it profits so much?”
This fallacious, plutocratic “common sense” is reflected in reader comments on fast-food strikes.
One reader wrote, “The uneducated, low-skilled, intellectually lazy that remain in those jobs over a long period of time make their own situation in life so thus warrant their status.” Another writes, “These types of jobs are starter jobs, for teens, college kids and for retirees to make extra money. If you are trying to raise a family on a minimum wage salary, somewhere your ambition and priorities got out of whack.”(5)
To overcome the lowly pay of $7.25 an hour, Leo Calderon suggests, “Stop complaining and get some education.” Leonard Dreher urges workers to “Do something to add value to society.” Glenn Sadler says that fast-food workers don’t deserve $15 an hour, and “need to earn it, not have it given to them. This generation just wants everything given to them without the work.”
Bringing these perspectives together, Judy Marshal calls for workers to try “getting an education or try to improve your work status with good old fashion hard work.” Meanwhile Larry Hubble of Phoenix, Arizona, comments that December 5, 2013, striking workers “apparently either [did] not need the money, or else they are just lazy slobs,” and that they should be fired.
Asked about the strikes, Domino’s vice president Tim McIntyre asserted, “Opportunity exists for everyone in our system who’s willing to work hard and focus on rising to the next level. For that reason we don’t focus on an individual, specific wage issue.” McIntyre further noted that he does not “believe unions are necessary for our brand” for reasons including the “tremendous upward mobility” at Domino’s.
Counting Red Herrings: 100 Ways to Change the Subject
The commentary opposed to protesters’ demands is marked by an egocentric abandonment of ethical considerations, and the embrace of classist stereotypes. Setting aside the merits of contested empirical claims about American economic mobility, such thinking legitimizes the subordination and exploitation of low-wage workers.
Collectively, these assertions suggest that the solution to exploitive low-pay is to 1) acquire a better education, 2) climb “upwards” out of assorted service-industry work, and/or 3) work hard to rise through the ranks within (or outside of) the service industry. In short, if you’re working for $7.25 an hour today, worry not, you can work your way up the economic ladder.
This endorses the idea that wealthy businesses are not morally obligated to provide workers with a wage that provides for basic well-being by the standards of the given society.
Justice Tomorrow Does Not Justify Today’s Injustice
“What justifies a company raking in record profits while sharing so little of immense profits which workers help to generate?” The retort “Because I can!” is illegitimate: It’s the might makes right or appeal to force fallacy.
Having shifted the debate to focus on the workers’ character and conduct, such narratives avoid crucial questions: “What entitles a wealthy, successful corporation to pay its workers so little while it profits so much?”
To suggest that this is acceptable because these workers live in a nation that supposedly provides them with the opportunity to climb toward better paying jobs is beside the point. Tomorrow’s justice does not justify today’s injustice. To say otherwise suggests that those without a particular socially exalted skillset or education should expect to be deprived of basic respect and recognition of their moral equality via wages that virtually guarantee present-day impoverishment, that it’s OK to exploit the “uneducated” and “unskilled.”
Such assertions violate the basic moral idea stated in the Declaration of Independence, that all are equal in terms of moral status. Poverty, ensured by low-wages, provokes very real suffering and even death. Obtaining a living wage and appropriate benefits is essential in a nation where more than 40,000 people die each year due to inadequate health care.(6)
Attempts to justify low pay for workers on account of their freedom to seek work elsewhere or their lack of an education irrelevant to their job amount to nothing more than subterfuge. Namely these diversions exemplify the “red herring” or “changing the subject” fallacy: arguing for a conclusion that is not at issue.
What’s Education Got to Do With It? Nothing
Arguing that fast-food workers are not entitled to a greater share of the wealth they generate as workers because they do not have a particular level of education is like arguing you shouldn’t have to pay as much for the car I’m selling because you don’t like my outfit. The two have nothing to do with one another. The value of my car has nothing to do with my outfit; and the value of the fast-food worker’s labor is not tied to possession or lack of a college degree. If a fast-food worker contributes to a business’ profits through her labor, then she deserves a fair share of those profits regardless of age or unrelated skill set.
Might Doesn’t Make Right
Putting aside that low-income people are profoundly reliant on hard-to-come-by low-wage jobs, let’s acknowledge that it’s true a Taco Bell employee can in fact quit. But this fact has nothing to do with the fundamental issue at hand: “What justifies a company raking in record profits while sharing so little of immense profits which workers help to generate?” The retort “Because I can!” is illegitimate: It’s the might makes right or appeal to force fallacy.
You can also abuse vulnerable people such as your own children, and you can throw a cat under the tire of a moving truck because you don’t like it. Decent people understand that not everything we can do should be done. Whether or not workers can or should climb to a different economic position is a convenient, industry-friendly diversion of the fundamental moral questions at hand.
Freedom to Quit Is Freedom to an Economic Bullet, Thus No Freedom at All
Claims that everyone has the freedom to choose their job either ignore or indicate ignorance about the significant limitations experienced by low-income people.
If I put a gun against your head and say, “Give me all of your money,” do you have the capability of uttering the word “No”? Of course you do. But the circumstances under which you must make your decision are so limitedly onerous and injurious that the decision does not deserve to be labeled a truly “free” one.
This is horizontal hostility: marginalized people turning on other disadvantaged individuals or groups rather than addressing those with measurable power and control over the root causes of inequality.
Can fast-food workers quit what might be a miserable job? Sure, of course they can, just as you can say no with a gun against your temple. Is your “freedom” significantly hindered by the negative consequences of quitting that low-paying job, like not being able to care for your loved ones or losing your place of residency? Of course it is.
Can CEOs and others doing richly well cut their profits, affording lifestyles far beyond basic necessities, to share with workers who are unable to cover the basics of life, let alone opportunities for personal development? Of course they can, and doing so would hurt them much less than it would for someone to lose a job in a scarce job market.
These ideas reflect a class bias favoring the interests and experiences of the economically privileged at the expense of those at the bottom. In particular they narrowly conceive of “responsibility” as having everything to do with workers’ decision making and efforts. They are comparably silent about the responsibility of businesses and their leaders and stockholders, namely their responsibility to pay laborers a fair wage, one recognizing the profits they help generate.
As Kansas City fast-food striker, Terrance Wise puts it, “We’re doing hard work. And we deserve to get a living wage for what we do.”Without such laborers, businesses would collapse and their profits would plummet – a point fast-food worker Amber Sterling made in her interview with the Today show.
The Robots Are Coming! The Robots Are Coming! Confronting Fast-Food Industry Fear Mongering
The industry also responds to fast-food workers’ demands by arguing that fast-food companies would turn to machines before they would pay $15 an hour.
In the first place, if and when companies can implement this technology at a reasonable cost, they will. In the meantime, they are reliant on human beings to fulfill these roles.
Secondly, low-end workers are among the most important customers for goods such as fast-food. This means that businesses not only rely on workers to generate profit within companies as workers, but also outside as customers generating sales. Should all such industries replace people with machines, they would simultaneously rob themselves of customers and, thus, profits.
This is an argument that amounts to: “Come one step closer to a living wage and I’ll rob myself!”
The pivotal role the general working population play in sustaining economic growth is among the key points made in the self-described “plutocrat” and advocate of “New Capitalism” Nick Hanauer’s Ted talk. “Raising wages increases demand, which increases hiring, which in turn increases wages and demands and profits, and that virtuous cycle of increasing prosperity is precisely what is missing from today’s economic recovery,” Hanauer said.
Later in the talk, he adds, “No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.” Thus, replacing millions of American laborers with machines may well only generate a greater need for governmental redistribution of wealth as in the guaranteed minimum income. So even if these industries “rob” themselves in the manner described above, the solution to their economic plight will be to put money into the hands of those they’ve deprived of work. So be it.
Doing the Right Thing: The Freedom and Responsibility of Businesses
The time has come to make visible the small-minded double-standards that emphasize the freedom and responsibility of the disadvantaged worker rather than emphasizing the freedom and responsibility of the comparably powerful and freer employer to do the right thing by fairly sharing wealth that workers help generate.
We should also point out and support businesses that recognize their responsibility. Dr. Bronner’s soap company provides a clear example of a company taking responsibility for the way it conducts business. The company has capped executive compensation at five times that of the lowest-paid position. Employees also receive a no-deductible PPO health insurance plan for themselves and their families.
While very few are embracing the level of ethical commitment displayed by companies like Dr. Bronner’s, some companies in the restaurant business are raising the standards.
The New York Times reports that a handful of restaurant chains are setting basement pay above the minimum wage. New England restaurant chain Boloco Burrito pays employees a minimum of $9 an hour. The California-based chain In-N-Out Burger pays workers at least $10.50 an hour. Costs at these restaurants are “largely similar to those at Chipotle or McDonald’s.” Shake Shack pays a minimum of $9.50 an hour and those working over 30 hours a week qualify for health coverage.
In September 2013, a growing Michigan-based restaurant chain, Moo Cluck Moo, increased pay from $12 to $15 an hour at its two stores. Owner Harry Moorhouse told the Times: “Our people work really hard, and $15 impacts their lives in a very positive way. The whole notion that it’s all kids starting out and they don’t deserve to be paid much, that’s all specious. We’re paying people $15 an hour so they have a living wage, so they really care about you when you come in the store.” In 2013, co-owner Brian Parker said that it “just feels human to do.” Moo Cluck Moo employee and mother of four, Rachel Troutman, 34, said that her improvement in earnings has allowed her to upgrade her transportation and housing, and to end reliance on food stamps.
Justice Is Best Served Through Solidarity
Rather than supporting the push for fairer business practices, some have expressed disgust for striking fast-food employees. Forbes reported that one New York Police Department officer responded to Brooklyn fast-food protestors by uttering under his breath: “You know what I hate? Everybody thinks they’re important.”
This reflects an increasingly popular denial of human dignity to all, that all are equal in intrinsic worth. Others complain that it makes no sense for fast-food workers to be paid more when they are struggling to make ends meet at their job – retail, customer service, and so on. This is horizontal hostility: marginalized people turning on other disadvantaged individuals or groups rather than addressing those with measurable power and control over the root causes of inequality.
Sarah Palin fanned the flames of horizontal hostility when she posted a widely discussed Facebook meme picturing US soldiers in combat accompanied by the text: “We get paid less than minimum wage and you’re demanding 15 bucks an hour to slap a burger on a bun.” Indeed many soldiers do receive poverty-level wages. According to GoArmy.com, basic pay for a Private E1 is just $18,378. Yet instead of promoting solidarity among workers in industries capable of improving workers’ wages, Palin’s post urges division rather than unity.
Expressing disdain for marginalized people who are demanding recognition of their dignity appears to be a misdirection of anger given the facts of CEO-worker pay ratio: that the richest 400 Americans possess more wealth than the poorest 60 percent of US households, and that the world’s 66 richest possess a net worth equal to 3.5 billion of the world’s poorest.(7) Struggling people of all stripes would be better served by embracing horizontal “unity,” and sending their democratically expressed outrage upward.
Company executives aren’t alone in denying their dependence on fast-food workers. Each and every day, fast-food workers feed millions of Americans. A survey by Placed Insights found that total percentages of Americans visiting fast-food chains in April 2013 was even higher: 50.7 percent visited McDonald’s, 24.7 percent visited Burger King, 23.8 percent visited Wendy’s, and 18.4 percent visited Taco Bell. And chances are that the very person shrugging off the impoverished lives brought about by poverty-level wages is denying their own dependence on these workers.
People who actually frequent fast-food venues can’t really mean it when they say that the answer is for workers to get better jobs. Just imagine if every fast-food worker or every low-wage child caretaker finally got that better job. Who would serve your burgers and who would watch your children?
America doesn’t “run on Dunkin.” We “run” on each other’s contributions: the farmworker, the teacher, the journalist, the fast-food worker, the doctor, the garbage collector, and so on. The sooner we disavow what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “hard-heartedness” that evokes sneers when disempowered people lay claim to their dignity, the better off we will all be.
Four Practical But Essential Steps of Solidarity
- Treat workers with respect. Tell them you don’t think they get paid enough, that you support their efforts to improve their working conditions, and that they have dignity regardless of their education status or the work they do.
- Ask managers of the businesses you patronize how much their employees are making. Let them know what you think of poverty-level wages. Choose to support businesses that treat their workers best by comparison. Your options will often be between bad and worse, but we have to start somewhere. Whenever possible, support cooperatives.
- Sign petitions in support of increased wages for fast-food, retail, and other marginalized and low-paid workers. For example, Low Pay Is Not OK’s petition.
- If you don’t work in these industries, use your immunity from retaliation by participating in rallies, marches, and simply raising the issue in your community.
Footnotes:
1. Iris M.Young, “Five Faces of Oppression,” in Theorizing feminisms: A reader, ed. E. Hackett and S. Haslanger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 6
2. Iris M.Young, “Displacing the Distributive Paradigm.” In Ethics in Practice, An Anthology, edited by Hugh LaFollette (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 541
4. Catherine Ruetschlin, “Fast-food Failure: How CEO-to-Worker Pay Disparity Undermines the Industry and the Overall Economy,” Demos, April 22, 2014 http://www.demos.org/publication/fast-food-failure-how-ceo-worker-pay-disparity-undermines-industry-and-overall-economy
5. These sentiments are an elaboration of salient principles in conservative political thought. In a 2011 op-ed titled, “How class warfare weakens America,” Paul Ryan touts American income mobility and a survey indicating the vast majority of a group of 500 successful entrepreneurs were from middle-class or lower-class backgrounds. Ryan calls for “civic solidarity” over class solidarity, and condemns “equality of outcome” as a “form of inequality – one that is based on political influence and bureaucratic favoritism.”
6. The exact number is 44,789. Andrew P. Wilper, Steffie Woolhandler, Karen E. Lasser, Danny McCormick, David H. Bor and David U. Himmelstein, “Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults,” December 2009. American Journal of Public Health. 99(12): 1-7. http://pnhp.org/excessdeaths/health-insurance-and-mortality-in-US-adults.pdf
7. Kasia Moreno, “The 67 Richest Are as Wealthy as the World’s Poorest 3.5 Billion,” Forbes, March 26, 2014 http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2014/03/25/the-67-people-as-wealthy-as-the-worlds-poorest-3-5-billion
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Updated 9/4/14 to correct link in footnote 6.
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The problem with ignoring criticisms is that you throw the baby out with the bathwater. The criticism of the minimum wage hike is generally valid. Increase the cost of labor too much and those that want to continue making money hand over fist will continue to do so, only without as many jobs or potentially even people at all (aka “replace you with robots”). And, further, by concentrating on just this one piece of economic activity as if it will actually change something for the better is it’s own fallacy. This idea has little to do with “justice” and everything to do with populism, which tends to be very short-sighted. We’ve moved away from vigilante justice because it’s fraught with problems, why aren’t we moving away from vigilante economics?
Put simply, the rich have locked all of the doors and hold all of the keys. Simply mandating that their employees get paid more doesn’t change this – if it did the roughly 80 years of minimum wages would have done something to stem our current-day issues with wages. What will happen is that McDonalds or Wendy’s or WalMart will simply make do with fewer people. Remember, these are publicly traded companies and shareholders’ profits are the only thing they are allowed to care about. After all, you need only look at any failing business, public or private, to see the first thing that happens: The bottom-level workers lose first. So if wages go up by 15-30% (depending on where you were below the $15 mark) who do you think will suffer? The McDonalds/Wendys CEOs? The franchise owners? Or the people assembling the fast food behind the cashiers?
Hiking the MW will cause short-term heartache for a lot of people (I’d wager on a simplistic 15-30% of people below $15/hr) who can’t take the heartache – the poor, who the MW hike pretends to help. Over the longer term, it’ll net out about the same, but the rich will have lost nothing and the poor will have suffered more as a class than they do now under the current MW.
I don’t pretend to have the answers, but an actual plan to help those at the bottom of society must be put forward instead of simply increasing the costs of labor to a business – that will turn out bad for everyone that needs help.
When you say: “Simply mandating that their employees get paid more doesn’t change this – if it did the roughly 80 years of minimum wages would have done something to stem our current-day issues with wages.” you are overlooking the fact that the minimum wage has not been tied to the cost of living index. If it were, the minimum wage would automatically increase over time instead of being vulnerable to Congressional (political) debate. The $2/hr minimum wage advocated for by MLK fifty-one years ago would be $15 today, adjusted to CPI.
I can accept your objection to my statement, but I note that you, yourself, overlook the problem with the CPI in defense of the MW: It has been a hugely politically driven index since shortly after it’s inception. It was originally supposed to be a simple “basket of goods” comparison between time periods and now it’s evolved into a pseudo-Cost Of Living Index. It’s undergone multiple revisions over the last 51 years since MLKJr advocated for a $2/hour wage. Had we tied the MW to the CPI, it would have been the political battle ground instead of MW. Don’t kid yourself and think that the politicians will simply declare defeat and move on to other topics – quite the contrary the specific target of the politics would simply have changed and the calculation changes of the CPI would have been fought over instead of the MW increases.
In addition to political wrangling, the CPI, as well as any true COLI calculation, is that they are _lagging_ references. A good portion of government economic data lags by six months to two years (depending on what’s being monitored and how it’s collected). So even if it were tied to the CPI or a straight COLI, it still wouldn’t help the poor, except in economic down turns: they would lag significantly behind the gains in an increasing economy and be paid too much in a contracting economy. This would cause those at or near the MW level to be cut quicker when things turn down to save on costs, hurting them when they need to buffer for the stagnation they will experience on the upside.
I’m wondering if you enjoy the perks of the present system, which is producing steadily enlarging gaps between incomes. You’re way into process, to the point I can’t understand much of what you’re saying. Do you like the present imbalance?
No, sir. I don’t benefit from the current system in any tangible way. I would, confessedly, love to be a beneficiary but I’m not so lucky.
I agree that the current system is broken, but as I said above: I do not have a plan I can advocate for. What I do know is that if the MW hike gets passed, various political actors will claim victory over the evil rich people for the down trodden poor people and then spend 20 more years pretending that the economy is fixed while the wealth and income gap continues to widen.
To torture a metaphor, it’s akin to trying to use dialysis to fix a heart that’s not beating: It might help for awhile, but it won’t fix the actual problem. At this point, plainly giving the political actors in our society an easy out and a sound bite for their next election campaign just won’t cut it. We need an actual plan to solve our issues with wealth and income disparity and we need to quit kicking the can down the road with tried-and-failed ideas that don’t actually fix the underlying problems.
We can all agree on the problem, but a truly workable solution still evades most everyone. We first need to acknowledge that the current system can’t be “fixed” because it ISN’T broken: it’s doing what it was DESIGNED to do. The Universal Basic Income idea is a stop gap solution which will get us closer to a more workable solution, but THE permanent solution is indeed known: it’s called a Natural Law Resource Based Economic Model as advocated by The Zeitgeist Movement ( http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com ) and The Venus Project ( http://www.thevenusproject.com ). I would invite anyone truly interested in actually solving this problem of providing for everyone’s basic human needs to check out the free book describing this complex train of thought (and even rebutting the ideas put forth after seriously looking into it) here:
http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/orientation
Time is running out. The planet doesn’t have much longer at this rate of destruction/consumption. Are you going to be part of the solution, or just another part of the problem? Humanity and the planet deserve better.
I do not put my advocacy behind UBI because UBI is unsustainable. A simple calculation of $10,000 per adult in the United States, for instance, yields a payout of $2.6T each year (~260m adults). Federal spending for 2014 is anticipated to be $3.8T. What 69% would you cut from the current federal spend to pay everyone a _below-federal-poverty-line_ UBI?
Marxism, while fairly popular with some, is simply unworkable for many reasons, one of the largest going back to to my comments up-thread about populism and vigilantism: leaving it to _people_ to manage is a bad idea. Additionally, while it sounds good (e.g. from each according to his ability, to each according to his need) it’s a pie in the sky governing method that becomes more and more draconian the more strictly you enforce it’s tenants.
If you think MW engineering is hard under the representational democracy we now inhabit in the US, wait until you need a revolution to stop those in power from keeping any excess to themselves while the hoi polloi are the ones to actually suffer from variations in economic output. This is the very thing, by the way, that we suffer from in our current oligarchy: the “top” keeps and the “bottom” gets to suffer. Why should we simply change task masters with what would likely be no direct or long-standing benefit to the bottom and a long-term decline and detriment to the middle of society?
You bring up resource destruction, and I agree that there is a lot of it in the world. However, the western world is the most caring of it’s resources because they established themselves and now live in what the majority of the world would consider abject luxury. This is heavily because of the ready availability of cheap energy. So, you have two options: use more resources to elevate the rest of the world to the Western world’s standards – which can be done relatively quickly and painlessly; or you put “sustainability” on a pedestal and remove the luxury the Western world has found, and it’s attending accoutrements of conservation and preservation.
The first is a goal we should be striving for. Nuclear power, fusion power sometime in the future, and hopefully a transition to hydrogen fuel as their mobile counterpart would elevate the entire world to the West’s level without much fuss, even if we continue on some of the dirtier fuels for another generation. This will lead to declining births to reduce the human body footprint, increased care-taking and outright stewardship of the environment, and other benefits.
The second is an idea designed to pull the West down to the prosperity level of third-world countries in the hopes of reducing the human footprint by basically “using less.” However, the natural response of humans to this situation, as you can see documented throughout all of history, is rampant ecological decimation until (parts of) humanity found prosperity. The Western world will breed once more at a pace that is more in tune with Africa than Japan and we will again exceed our replacement thresholds for population. You can even see this effect within a single country: the poor have more children than the rich. This will overtax the land, overtax the food supplies, and lead to an increasingly violent and aggressive population as they seek the resources our biology demands. To maintain sustainability, the task masters will have to be brutal indeed, to ensure compliance with the ideal.
This single-mindedness is a poor idea, as history has taught us. The historical suffering, just in the 20th century without going back still further, is evidence of this. Hitler, Stalin, Mao – these are the faces and personalities that single-mindedness will allow to thrive. That cost, to me, is too great to endorse your ideals, and an emotional plea of “time is running out” simply doesn’t go far enough to wish that suffering on my fellow man or any descendants that may trace themselves back to me.
No, the key to humans ruling humans is simple and straight forward: moderation. Capitalism is best when given boundaries. Socialism is best when coupled with Capitalism. Communism is best when applied only to those that have need and not every participant within a society. Blending all of the traits and methods that humanity has at it’s disposal is the best way to move forward with the precise balance coming after a long and hard road of trial and error, sweat and blunder.
Thanks for your thoughts, Arsten.
I agree that UBI is not workable in the long run, not because “we can’t afford it”, but because we need to eventually get away from putting a “dollar value” on the resources necessary to meet human needs. This understandably may strike someone steeped in the inherited duality of “if it’s not (free market) capitalism, it must be communism” to jump to the “prima facie” assumption you just did. Marx and Engels did not have computers, a global instant communication network, levels of automation that make human labor itself almost completely optional. We don’t need to control the allocation of resources based on some arbitrary marker like money at all. We need to realize that the rules of the game we’ve inherited are very soon going to be colliding with some very fixed real world limitations and start figuring out a better way that has referents in the real world. As the RSA opening tag line goes: “Anyone who believes in infinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad . . . or an economist.”
Here’s a start:
“[The Zeitgeist Movement] is interested in scientific application, as applied to societal sustainability, both physical and cultural. [ . . . ] the method of science is not restricted in its application within the ‘physical world’ and hence the social system, infrastructure, educational relevance and even understanding human behavior itself, all exist within the confines of scientific causality. In turn, there is a natural feedback system built into physical reality which will express itself very clearly in the context of what ‘works’ and what doesn’t over time, guiding our conscious adaptation.
“Marxism is not based on this ‘calculated’ worldview at all, even though there might be some scientifically based characteristics inherent. For example, the Marxist notion of a ‘classless society’ was to overcome the capitalist originating ‘inhumanity’ imposed on the working class or ‘proletariat’.
“[The Zeitgeist Movement’s] advocated train of thought, on the other hand, sources advancements in human studies. It finds, for example, that social stratification, which is inherent to the capitalist/market model, to actually be a form of indirect violence against the vast majority as a result of the evolutionary psychology we humans naturally posses. It generates an unnecessary form of human suffering on many levels, which is destabilizing and, by implication, technically unsustainable.”
~~ The Zeitgeist Movement Defined (the new 320 page book with over 880 footnotes available for free download)
“The purpose of a system is what it does” (~~Stafford Beer) Our current capitalist monetary based system is designed to produce war, famine, inequality, hunger, violence, poverty, and abject human suffering. We have the ability to change that system and we have an incredible technical sophistication that can make it doable if we can stop clinging to 19th Century thinking. I agree we don’t have a resource scarcity problem—the earth is abundant in resources—we have a resource distribution problem that needs to be addressed. That is the main thrust of a Resource Based Economic Model.
Again education is the key (not only greater technical sophistication, but lower birth rates as well). Ephemeralization is allowing us to do more with less which allows us to have a higher standard of living while reducing our ecological footprint. Look at current trends: productivity going through the roof, but wages stagnating and consumers’ “buying power” steadily declining—yet the resources and the technology to meet human needs is still there and increasing in sophistication moment by moment. I would highly recommend Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book: “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism” for more on this concept.
We need to acknowledge that the world has changed incredibly since our models of societal governance were created to solve VERY different problems and we need to update our models to reflect the real world we inhabit as it CURRENTLY is. We can start by re-imagining “work”—what it is and why we do it—and why do so many of us continue to “volunteer” if it’s just about the money?
http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-re-imagining-work
The problem with Zeitgeist is as I have said: It’s Marxism with some updates. I have read the Zeitgeist’s statements, though not their latest manifesto, before. Most of the ideas inherent are communist, and I would opine Marxist, in nature, even if they have changed certain portions to be more modern from Marx’s original views with shades of a technocracy. Both Marx and the Zeitgeist movement, as you noted, are attempting to “overcome” what is seen as injustice by developing a “pool of humanity” where there are no classes, or differentiation, or anything of the sort. The approach the topics with slightly different origination points, but their goal is the same. Your attempt to segregate this ideology from it’s predecessors is akin to statements I’ve heard from Christians that say “Real Christianity has never been attempted.” when those Christians are faced with criticisms of their faith’s 2,000-year track record. It most certainly was, but those in power used it to suit their purposes. As will those in power always tend to do.
But the blunder of both Marxism and the Zeitgeist movement avoid the problem inherent with humanity in pursuit of their ideological goals: We are human. Those that lead will become, in Orwell’s terms, “more equal” and will attempt to control. As Daniel Webster put it so eloquently, “There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” Those at the top can’t resist, we see it even today: They claim to be able to better direct and control the lives of the common person than the common person themselves. This leads to misery and suffering of those common people while the “more equal” people do not suffer and insist that it’s “for the better.”
To illustrate this, how many times have you seen people say that poor people are poor because of their own choices? How many of those choices would be made better by the person making that statement? Usually, I’ve found, all of the choices of the poor person would have been made better by the one making that statement. And this is among the lower classes. That statement wasn’t made by some oligarch, that is made by someone who is ostensibly in the same boat as the poor person, even if they might sit a bit further forward. This is human nature. We are, by nature, grading ourselves by all of those around us. Any bit that makes us feel “Better” than those around us are seized upon. This is why communism in general fails on it’s own. It’s also why capitalism and socialism also fail on their own.
To your other point, the problem with abandoning money is that money is a marker of value. That is all. This marker of value has come to be identity by humans, but that identity will not go away and it will simply transition to something else. Take a look around you. People are identified by net-worth. For those that don’t have that net-worth to be inherently identified against, they instead chose to identify in other ways. Religious belief. Political affiliations. Environmentalism. Humans tribalize and become single-minded. In all cases, this is bad for humanity as a whole. The middle-century capitalism that the US used to grow it’s economy and do a lot of rebuilding the world over was instrumental to recovery from World War 2. That capitalism, however, became single-minded. Dollars, capitalism, and identity became linked and the United States began to tumble from it’s perch. The restoration of the rest of the world’s manufacturing ability accelerated this tumble, as it would have in due course, but the US is where it’s at now not because of the system, but because the populace gleefully gave up what Jefferson warned us about: vigilance.
Our system does work. Look at other Western nations. They also have a mix of socialism, capitalism, and communism and they continue to function (at various levels of effectiveness) as they work through with sweat and blunder the issues they face. We, as a nation, have instead stopped working together and tribalized. Each faction refusing to work with another, each idea on the table being rejected by all sides for their own ideological purity.
This won’t be solved by throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We will simply start the clock over. Whether the new bath we draw is another mixed social form or we go to something like the Zeitgeist movement doesn’t matter. We have simply painted over the past at that point and done none of the hard work required to work past our inherent humanity.
This meme that the “uneducated” deserve poverty level wages, and that you need more education to deserve higher wages is BS. What we have is education creep. 100 years ago a grade school education was more than sufficient as it is today for many jobs. Let’s not pretend that service type jobs and many others require anything more, but today people are looking askance at anyone that doesn’t have a college education. Most jobs don’t require a college education in terms of doing the work, but employers are still demanding one just so they can differentiate among excess workers in the industrial reserve army. The fact is that workers are in excess supply, and by virtue of the law of supply and demand, employers can get choosy over which ones to hire and pay them less because there are others unemployed ready and willing to take their jobs.
And they can justify not paying more than poverty wages by saying their workers aren’t “educated” enough. If you’re educated enough to do the work, you’re educated enough. Employer sentiments to the contrary are so much BS and propaganda.
Higher wages and a static housing supply should be good for landlords.
Arsten (can’t seem to reply to your last post),
You can call TZM Marxist with updates, Marxism with computers (or any other variation we get a lot of), but it would still be an inaccurate assessment based on an incomplete understanding of TZM’s train of thought. I also don’t agree with your application of the “No TRUE Scotsman” Fallacy and see it as another easy, but lazy way to dismiss new and challenging ideas. That said, it can be very difficult to assess the true nature of human behavior divorced from the psycho-social stressors that our monetary system places on us. This has been studied, though and we are finding that we are actually soft-wired for empathy with the younger generation especially being able to see more of their world as within their empathic scope. I would recommend Jeremy Rifkin’s short RSA Animate talk on The Empathic Civilization ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g ) as well as Roman Krznaric’s The Power of Outrospection ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG46IwVfSu8 ) . Both are only ten minutes long and explain a lot about how the current research is revealing an evolving common humanity that we will need to master if we are to be able to update our inherited competitive, “domination hierarchy” way of thinking that keeps us fighting rather than sharing. It won’t be the current generation that makes that leap, but more likely the next. What you see as the “hard work” for us is becoming second nature to folks who have grown up in a age of global communication and more tolerance of people different from themselves.
Lastly (not that anyone’s still reading this), I leave you with TZM’s Mission Statement, because . . . if you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there. ;-)
Mission Statement
Founded in 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement is a sustainability advocacy organization, which conducts community based activism and awareness actions through a network of global/regional chapters, project teams, annual events, media and charity work.
The movement’s principle focus includes the recognition that the majority of the social problems that plague the human species at this time are not the sole result of some institutional corruption, absolute scarcity, a political policy, a flaw of “human nature” or other commonly held assumptions of causality. Rather, the movement recognizes that issues such as poverty, corruption, pollution, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be “symptoms” born out of an outdated social structure.
While intermediate reform steps and temporal community support are of interest to the movement, the defining goal is the installation of a new socioeconomic model based upon technically responsible resource management, allocation and design through what would be considered the scientific method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions.
This “Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy” (NLRBE) is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a monetary or even political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods known, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions that are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profit, business and other structural and motivational issues.
The movement is loyal to a train of thought, not figures or institutions. The view held is that through the use of socially targeted research and tested understandings in science and technology, we are now able to logically arrive at societal applications that could be profoundly more effective in meeting the needs of the human population, increasing public health. There is little reason to assume war, poverty, most crime and many other monetarily-based scarcity effects common in our current model cannot be resolved over time. The range of the movement’s activism and awareness campaigns extend from short to long term, with methods based explicitly on non- violent methods of communication.
The Zeitgeist Movement has no allegiance to country or traditional political platforms. It views the world as a single system and the human species as a single family and recognizes that all countries must disarm and learn to share resources and ideas if we expect to survive in the long run. Hence, the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help everyone on Earth, not a select group.
“Arsten (can’t seem to reply to your last post),” This site has a limit to nesting.
“You can call TZM Marxist with updates, Marxism with computers (or any other variation we get a lot of), but it would still be an inaccurate assessment based on an incomplete understanding of TZM’s train of thought.” __ I call it this because this is really what the movement is. It seeks to completely redefine what humanity is, but all of the ideas I’ve seen put forth by it’s acolytes are non-specific and very rooted in Marxism’s form of communism. Hand waving it as “incomplete understanding” simply means that you don’t get that your message is either tepid or very poorly communicated. As someone who has read about this movement multiple times in the past several years, I would ask you to lay bare your specific plans for achieving your generalities.
“I also don’t agree with your application of the “No TRUE Scotsman” Fallacy and see it as another easy, but lazy way to dismiss new and challenging ideas.” __ Except I did no such application. I didn’t say “No true communist would support this endeavor.” I said that attempting to distance yourself from your roots is pointless and transparent. A rose by any other name, hm?
“That said, it can be very difficult to assess the true nature of human behavior divorced from the psycho-social stressors that our monetary system places on us. This has been studied, though and we are finding that we are actually soft-wired for empathy with the younger generation especially being able to see more of their world as within their empathic scope.” __ Yes….but no. The younger generations are metabolizing information available to them just as the preceding generations did. The key difference is that they retain it less as it’s a few clicks away. (Humans use communal memory, which means they tend to leave knowledge in the hands of an expert unless they are an expert or there is a specific need to gain that knowledge. This holds true for everything, even the simple filial structures where a parent, for instance, may serve as a ready source of family knowledge so that they only retain the key points and leave the details to the “expert.”) There has been no evidence presented that this has changed — what has changed are habits. Youths are more likely to rely on readily available information on line and be very adept at filtering out “bad” information, which was something that is more difficult for elder generations – but those elder generations are very adept at skimming through books for that same information. Different sets of skills that enable different patterns of information consumption that amounts to the same end achieved through different skillsets.
As for the “emotionality” that, too, is common. Did you notice that the boomer generation was all about peace and how “The Man” was bad? What happened when they grew up? They became The Man. They, like the current generations, are following the same up and out path that our fore bearers did: Highly emotional from 14-21; moderating/transitional emotional from 21-30; and then logical with breaks of emotion beyond 30-40. Thus, the “younger generation” will ALWAYS exhibit the behaviors you mention and those behaviors will temper with age, much as they always have.
“I would recommend Jeremy Rifkin’s short RSA Animate talk on The Empathic Civilization ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g )” __ I wouldn’t. Jeremy Rifkin is a futurist. Every few years, he releases a book prophesying how in the next few years some new technology and/or concept will radically alter civilization. He has yet to be spot on, though he’s had a few peripheral hits – but the changes weren’t as they were stated in his books. Predicting the future is /hard/. Also, the last article I read of his at the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/31/capitalism-age-of-free-internet-of-things-economic-shift) where he’s discussing post-scarcity….he misrepresents Marx’s statements. He says “…Marx never asked what might happen if intense global competition some time in the future forced entrepreneurs to introduce ever more efficient technologies, accelerating productivity to the point where the marginal cost of production approached zero, making goods and services “priceless” and potentially free…” and that’s just….just strange. Marx said that capitalism was going to move us to this point and that this post-scarcity world would be the founding of “true communism.” As such, Jeremy Rifkin is someone I wouldn’t bother with, even if you like his ideas. In a few years, he’ll publish a new book and be off onto another book tour and another topic.
“Both are only ten minutes long and explain a lot about how the current research is revealing an evolving common humanity that we will need to master if we are to be able to update our inherited competitive, “domination hierarchy” way of thinking that keeps us fighting rather than sharing. It won’t be the current generation that makes that leap, but more likely the next. What you see as the “hard work” for us is becoming second nature to folks who have grown up in a age of global communication and more tolerance of people different from themselves.” __ Here is the problem. We have known this about ourselves for at least 100 years. Psychology and sociology have evaluated this sort of thing for a century. We know that A) Humanity forms communities first and then B) Forms identities based on these communities (with of course a C) where we war with identities that don’t conform to our interests or when our interests are threatened). We can’t change that. That will happen until we have an evolutionary event. What we can do is what we have veered away from: Tolerance education. Instead of teaching that there are 100 view points and teach them how to evaluate these, we try to instruct our young that there is a “correct” view point, and in some cases this “correct” view is incorrect and is being used as a means to an end (the end is usually money, our main identity driver.)
But, as in histories past, those that feel their communities are threatened are moving to strangle the opposition. In the US, for instance, the Democrats claim emotional and moral superiority while Republicans claim logical and fiscal superiority – each are staking their grounds and each are closing ranks to support “their” communities, their identities.
“Lastly (not that anyone’s still reading this), I leave you with TZM’s Mission Statement, because . . . if you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there. ;-)”
I have read the mission statement. Generalities are not useful. My previous request stands: what are the specifics? How will you change all of the inherent aspects of humanity to achieve these ends? What will the transition be? How many will suffer in this transition? How long will they suffer? What will be the transition’s trigger? What will happen when someone decides to deceive a large swath of the populous for their own personal gain (popularity is an identity, too, remember. Or will narcissism and leader/follower mentalities be one of the changes to humanities aspects you undertake?)?
It seems as though we really are not that far apart, but the differences come down mostly to definitions and assumptions. The “No True Scotsman” fallacy reference was for the “Real Christianity has never been attempted.” retort you offered which is similar to the one the Free Market Libertarians/Anarchist Capitalists always trot out (well, we’ve never had a TRULY free market free from government regulation to be able to prove that our theories are sound! Non-Aggression Principle, etc.)
The “trigger” you ask of will likely be the collapse of the current monetary/capitalist system when it fails to provide for the basic needs of enough of humanity that that growing disenfranchised sector rises up in open revolt. Humanity is not good at seeing and adapting to change proactively, rather we continue to do the same things we’ve always done until they are no longer sustainable and the system collapses. It is after this that we eventually rebuild using the raw materials on hand at the time. The train of thought of TZM intends to merely be a storehouse of those raw materials to be found “lying about” that the next generation will use to rebuild human society from the ashes of the previous failed attempt. It only takes reaching about 3.5% to reach a critical mass for true lasting change to take place, but like the architects of the great cathedrals of Medieval Europe, they knew their vision would not be completed in their lifetime.
Arbores serit diligens agricola, quarum adspiciet baccam ipse numquam. (The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit.) ~~Cicero
“The “No True Scotsman” fallacy reference was for the “Real Christianity has never been attempted.” retort you offered which is similar to the one the Free Market Libertarians/Anarchist Capitalists always trot out (well, we’ve never had a TRULY free market free from government regulation to be able to prove that our theories are sound! Non-Aggression Principle, etc.)” __ And that was, really, the point. That’s what your statements of trying to distance yourself from your roots looks like. Some Christians try to distance themselves from their roots, too. Can you see the parallel?
“The “trigger” you ask of will likely be the collapse of the current monetary/capitalist system when it fails to provide for the basic needs of enough of humanity that that growing disenfranchised sector rises up in open revolt. Humanity is not good at seeing and adapting to change proactively, rather we continue to do the same things we’ve always done until they are no longer sustainable and the system collapses. ” __ And here’s the problem: This has happened so many times before that I would die typing the historical references. And each and every single time it’s happened, we haven’t adapted to a new, we’ve merely adjusted either to those around us or to a variety of the system we just came out of. Critical mass revolutions are not revolutionary, they are evolutionary. While the US calls it the “Revolutionary War” it was, really, a civil war that the rebellion won. What did we setup as a replacement? Pretty much the same exact system as was in the original country, with some modifications for the ideals that the framers wished of their own previous government. Had the US’s Civil War been won by the rebellion in the South, what would have replaced the Union’s government? Pretty much the exact same form of government tailored to the ideals of the framers that would have arisen out of the South (they were already pretty much mirroring the Union’s system, in fact).
The true revolutions created change by war, rampant bloodshed, and, in a lot of cases, civil and political oppression. Most Coups are very messy, very bloody affairs. Why? Because those in power will use the power they have to stay in power. You must take that power which is not given up freely, and that, historically, ends in bloodshed.
What is most likely to happen, is that, should the capitalist system “collapse” actually happen, those responsible will be exiled (maybe put to death) and new persons will be put into power with the hopes of getting “Back on track.”
“It is after this that we eventually rebuild using the raw materials on hand at the time. The train of thought of TZM intends to merely be a storehouse of those raw materials to be found “lying about” that the next generation will use to rebuild human society from the ashes of the previous failed attempt. ” __ So….you intend to rebuild in a format that suits your organization’s ideology. Will you still provide the raw materials to the rebuild effort if that ideology is rejected by those seeking your materials? If the answer is “No” then your organization is still practicing “dominion hierarchy.” You also seem to assume that everything is the fault of society, which is my main issue with your organization’s ideology. Once our current system “collapses” you won’t get a bunch of sheep looking for revelation and impression into a new order of some sort, you’ll get feudalism.
“It only takes reaching about 3.5% to reach a critical mass for true lasting change to take place,” __ 3.5% of what to reach a critical mass? People that believe in your cause? Roughly 40% of Americans are Democrats and 40% are Republicans. How will your 3.5% override those larger percentages? If you are counting world population, way more than 3.5% practice Communism in this world, but the traditional communist grip is steadily waning as people find it lacking. The stable communist country is, too, moving to a mixed social platform.
“but like the architects of the great cathedrals of Medieval Europe, they knew their vision would not be completed in their lifetime.” __ That’s a misconception. Most churches were usable for gatherings in 10-20 years. They were in constant renovation for 15 – 500 years after that, but it was like adding onto your house today: You have and live in the main quarters and the “new” stuff being added was done in small bits as their own projects. A room here, a kitchen remodel there, and so forth. (Also, people didn’t die at 35. They lived into their late 50s and early 60s.) There are a couple of cathedrals that actually took a generation or more to “open” but those weren’t the norm and came about because of other factors.
“Arbores serit diligens agricola, quarum adspiciet baccam ipse numquam. (The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit.) ~~Cicero” __ “Beginning is easy, continuing is hard.” (Japanese proverb)